Race Guide: Tirreno-Adriatico

Get to Know: Tirreno-Adriatico

Once a training ground for Milan-San Remo, this stage race now also draws racers targeting May’s Giro d’Italia

Joe Lindsey

(Photo by The 2013 edition of Tirreno-Adriatico saw days of cold rain. (RCS/Fabio Ferrari))

Dates: March 12–21, 2014

Italian races in particular seem to always have a colorful nickname: Milan-San Remo is La Primavera, Giro di Lombardia is the Race of the Falling Leaves , and so on. Tirreno-Adriatico is no different: It’s the Race of the Two Seas. Here’s a look at this prestigious WorldTour stage race.

History
Among top stage races, Tirreno-Adriatico is actually not that old: 2014 will be the 49th edition. The race began in 1966 as a three-stage event. In the early years, it was often a fairly flat affair suited to sprinters. In fact, in the first edition, second-place finisher Vito Taccone was actually tied on time with winner Dino Zandegu, who took the win by virtue of his higher stage placings.

Traditionally, the race served as a preparatory event in advance of Milan-San Remo. Racers had trouble getting in big mileage to prepare for San Remo’s unmatched length (about 300km) thanks to its late-March spot on the calendar.So Milan-San Remo promoter RCS Sport (which also runs the Giro d’Italia) created Tirreno-Adriatico, with at least one long stage intended to give riders a feel for the seven- to eight-hour odyssey of Milan-San Remo.

Although modern training techniques make racing to train less important, that tradition holds even today. In 2013, two stages were 230km or longer and in 2014 there’s a 244km stage.

Tirreno-Adriatico has also added individual time trials, team time trials, and various climbing stages in the past two decades (the 2012 and 2013 editions in particular were tough) and sprinters no longer vie for overall victory. As much as a prep event for Milan-San Remo, Tirreno now offers a key early season tune-up for stage racers, particularly those who are targeting May’s Giro d’Italia.

Course
Generally, stage race names are pretty descriptive (the route of Paris-Nice goes from Paris to Nice, for example). Tirreno-Adriatico is no different, always starting on the western, Tyrrhenian sea of Italy and bisecting the country to the finish on the Adriatic coast.

As in 2013, the 2014 Tirreno-Adriatico is bookended by a pair of time trials. A twisty, technical 18.5km team time trial kicks things off on in the coastal town of Donoratico. That will offer up an early leader and set the tone for the first few stages. The race ends with a dead-flat 9.1km individual TT, with far fewer corners, in the Adriatic seaside village of San Benedetto del Tronto.

In between, the race route marches east, albeit not in a straight line. The key road stages this year come in the middle of the race. Stage 4, the San Remo prep stage, is 244km long with three medium-length climbs, including a finish up to the Selvarotonda ski resort with a maximum gradient of 10 percent (and a much more humane average of 5.3 percent).

The tricky Stage 5 is 192 up-and-down kilometers with one big climb, the Passo Lanciano, followed by a fast descent before a short but brutally steep climb to the finish in Guardiagrele, with pitches near 25 percent. It’s not as bad as the 27 percent ramps of the Porto Sant’Elpidio stage last year, but it’s close.

Weather
Spring in Italy can be a bit wild. Last year in particular was cold and wet. This winter has seen milder temperatures, but still a lot of rain in certain regions. The 2013 edition saw several miserably rainy stages and riders have to be hoping for drier, and maybe warmer, weather this year. Forecasting more than a week out is dicey work, but right now the long-range looks promising, with sun and temperatures mostly in the 50s.

Riders to Watch
While Paris-Nice has attracted some of the top stage-race talent, Tirreno still boasts a who’s-who start list of contenders. After the withdrawal of Sky’s Chris Froome due to back pain, Richie Porte was named the team leader.

He’ll face off with Movistar’s Nairo Quintana and BMC’s Cadel Evans, both of whom are targeting the Giro d’Italia. Other top threats include Rigoberto Uran and Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma–Quick-Step), Astana’s Michele Scarponi, the Belkin duo of Bauke Mollema and Robert Gesink, and young gun Andrew Talansky of Garmin-Sharp.

The race will also be a key test for Lotto-Belisol’s GC captain Jurgen van den Broeck and Sky’s Bradley Wiggins, both of whom are attempting to rebound from tumultuous 2013 seasons. Wiggins, however, is set to ride in service of Richie Porte.

Did You Know?
Classics legend Roger de Vlaeminck holds the record for most wins, with six. Not only that, he won all six in a row, from 1972 to 1977.

Tirreno-Adriatico is one of the few races that Eddy Merckx never won. He placed as high as second, in 1976.

Since the second edition, the race has always ended in San Benedetto del Tronto, much as the Tour de France always ends in Paris.

Because of its original role as a prep race for Milan-San Remo, Tirreno occupies a nearly identical mid-March spot on the calendar to Paris-Nice. Traditionally, stage racers went to Paris-Nice and sprinters to Tirreno. Now that the two races are more similar, there’s talk of moving Tirreno so they don’t conflict. Both are WorldTour events, which means top teams must send squads to both races at once.

No American has ever won Tirreno; Chris Horner finished second in 2012. Cadel Evans is the only native English-speaking winner (2011).